This invention relates to commercially available packaged forms of cigarettes which are non-smokeable in their retail form. The purchased package contains the necessary components which may be applied or manipulated by the smoker to render the non-smokeable cigarette, smokeable.
Various types of make your own cigarettes have been available for some time. Many of them function as a substitute for the traditional type of roll-your-own cigarette involving the use of fine cut tobacco and cigarette papers. Many of these devices have worked very well, such as that described in Canadian Patent 1,271,389. This product is directed to the provision of a tobacco rod encompassed in porous paper which renders the product non-smokeable but may be made into a smokeable cigarette by placing the porous wrapped tobacco rod in a cigarette tube which may optionally carry a cigarette filter. Other types of non-smokeable cigarettes which have been directed at modifying the filter end of the cigarette to provide for a non-smokeable feature are described in Canadian Patent 2,011,254; German Gebrauchsmuster G 93 19 938.4; Canadian patent application 2,184,035 and Canadian patent application 2,192,760.
Although these various types of non-smokeable cigarettes have met with varying degrees of commercial success, there continues to be room for improvement in respect of the manner in which the non-smokeable cigarette is made smokeable, particularly in facilitating the user""s manipulation of devices to be assembled on the cigarette filter.
In accordance with an aspect of the invention, various non-smokeable cigarette configurations are provided which can be rendered smokeable by the smoker assembling a tubular sleeve on the cigarette filter area to render the cigarette smokeable. Such aspects of the invention are provided by the use of various cigarette tobacco rod and filter connection systems such as porous tipping paper, porous or non-porous circumferential bands and interrupted tipping papers. All of these systems have in common the feature that the filter portion of the cigarette is modified in some way to provide a nonsmokeable cigarette and the smoker need only to assemble a tubular sleeve to the filter to thereby facilitate conversion of a non-smokeable cigarette to a smokeable product.
According to an aspect of the invention, a non-smokeable cigarette unit which may be rendered smokeable by application of a tubular sleeve to the cigarette filter region has a tobacco rod, a filter plug and connecting material for connecting the filter plug to the tobacco rod. At least a portion of the periphery of the filter plug is of a sufficient porosity to render the cigarette unit unsmokeable. The filter has a diameter less than the diameter of the tobacco rod. The material bridges a transition from the smaller filter to the larger tobacco rod whereby the transition portion of the material assists in sliding the sleeve onto the larger tobacco rod to provide a smokeable cigarette.
According to another aspect of the invention, a method for producing a non-smokeable cigarette unit comprises attaching with connecting material a filter plug to a tobacco rod where the filter plug has a diameter smaller than the diameter of the tobacco rod. The connecting material defines a transition portion from the smaller filter to the larger tobacco rod.